For me this is an easy one. I used to have a friend called Barty, we both got into NMA at around about the same time while still at school. First, I had all my stuff on tape, and Barty had all the albums except Thunder, at the time, all our pocket money was spent down the pub, so buying records did not happen as often as it should.
One day in the summer 1989 while killing time walking around Nottingham, we saw someone busking. He was playing an electric violin. It sounded phenomenal, so we stud and watched for a bit. You could not see his face, there was a curly black mop with the back end of his violin sticking out of it. When he finished his set, we went and had a chat with him. I asked him if he had heard the song Vagabonds with a similar sound to it, and he said, - yes, it was me on the track. He was Ed Alleyne-Johnson
We were thrilled by this, being big fans, but never having seen any of the band members on anything. So, I suggested to Barty, if we clubbed together, we could go and buy the Thunder LP, and get Ed to sign the inner cover where the lyrics to Vagabonds was. So, we dashed off up to Virgin mega store, and purchased a copy with its gate fold sleeve. and then headed back down to where Ed was playing. I remember joking to Barty on the way back, that we would get back, show him the album, and then the violinist would say - no, I was only joking mate !!
But, no, as it was is was Ed, and he was pleased to give a nice long scrawl along in the lyrics to Vagabonds. I think Barty still has that album cover amongst his prised possessions.
